ed for nearly twelve to thirteen hours a day merely to survive (Moses 27). Many young girls left their families in the countryside and migrated alone to the cities, hoping to profit from higher paying jobs at the factories, and by 1866 nearly one and a half women worked in Industry and totaled approximately thirty percent of the workforce (Guilbert, 44). However, economic independence was unobtainable with the wages they were given. Women worked for considerably lower wages than men and thus caused more anger towards women from men due to the fact that men felt that jobs were being taken away from them by women (Guilbert 46). Because of frequent layoffs, working class women were forced to resort to prostitution and thievery in order to survive. French women became the concubines of the bourgeois French Industrialists. As Marx said, "Thus it is that woman's true equalities are warped to her disadvantage, and all the moral and delicate elements in her nature become the means for enslaving her and making her suffer," (Beauvoir 114). French laws were no help to working class women. For example, French law only recognized as criminal the rape of those fifteen years old or younger (Moses 84). In contrast, in 1810 abortion was outlawed with stiff penalties (Beauvoir 115). Women's rights were further marginalized in 1826 when divorce was abolished (111). Working-class women were most concerned about women's sexual vulnerability, and economic insecurity. Bourgeois women would have their own distinct concerns.Bourgeois women were more concerned with their civil and political rights, married women's property rights, and access to the professions than working-class women were. These women were forced to lead a life of limited education. Throughout her life they were segregated from the opposite sex, and owed obedience to her father and husband. Marriages were arranged. The whole purpose of the Bourgeois woman's life was to be married and ...
